To the Priests of Ile de France (30 May 1980)

On Friday, 30 May 1980, the Holy Father addressed the priests of Ile de France in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, whom he exhorted to remember that they are priests of Jesus Christ, ordained “to advance men in the divine life.”

Dear Brother Priests,

1. It is a great joy for me to address you this evening - and in the first place - to you priests and deacons of Paris and the Paris region, and through you to all the priests and deacons of France. For you, I am a bishop: with you, I am a priest. You are my brothers by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders. The letter I sent to you last year for Maundy Thursday already told you of my special esteem, affection and trust. The day after tomorrow, I shall meet at length with your bishops, who are my brothers by special title; it is in union with them that I speak to you. But in my eyes, in the eyes of the Council, you are inseparable from the bishops, and I will think of you when talking to them. A deep communion unites priests and bishops, based on sacrament and ministry.

Dear friends, may you understand the love I have for you in Christ Jesus! If Christ asks me, like the Apostle Peter, to “strengthen my brothers”, it is you first of all who must benefit from it.

2. To walk with joy and hope in our priestly life, we must go back to the sources. It is not the world that determines our role, our status, our identity. It is Christ Jesus; it is the Church. It is Christ Jesus who has chosen us, as his friends, to bear fruit; who has made us his ministers: we participate in the charge of the unique Mediator who is Christ. It is the Church, the Body of Christ, which for two thousand years has demonstrated the indispensable place held within it by bishops, priests and deacons.

And you, priests of France, you have the good fortune to be the heirs of a host of priests who remain examples for the entire Church, and who are for me a constant source of meditation. To speak only of the closest period, I am thinking of Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint John Eudes, the masters of the French School, Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, the missionaries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries whose work in Africa I admired.

The spirituality of all these pastors bears the mark of their time, but the interior dynamism is the same and the note of each one enriches the overall testimony of the priesthood that we have to live. How I would have liked to go as a pilgrim to Ars, if it had been possible! The Curé of Ars remains indeed for all countries an unparalleled model, both of the fulfillment of the ministry, and of the holiness of the minister, devoted to prayer and penance for the conversion of souls.

Many studies and exhortations have also marked the path of the life of the priests of your country: I am thinking for example of the admirable letter of Cardinal Suhard: “The priest in the city”. The Second Vatican Council took up the whole doctrine of the priesthood in the Constitution “ Lumen Gentium ”[ 1 ] and in the decree “ Presbyterorum Ordinis ”, which had the merit of considering the consecration of priests in the perspective of their apostolic mission, within the people of God, and as a participation in the priesthood and in the mission of the bishop. These texts are extended by many others, in particular by those of Paul VI, of the Synod, and my own letter.

These are the testimonies, these are the documents which trace for us the path of the priesthood. This evening, in this high place which is like a Cenacle, I only give you, dear friends, a few essential recommendations.

3. And first, have faith in your priesthood. Oh, I am not unaware of all that could discourage and perhaps shake some priests today. Many analyses, testimonies, insist on these real difficulties which I keep very present in mind - in particular the small number of ordinations - even if I do not take the time to enumerate them this evening. And yet, I say to you: be happy and proud to be priests.

All the baptized form a priestly people, that is to say they have to offer to God the spiritual sacrifice of their whole life, animated by a loving faith, uniting it to the unique Sacrifice of Christ. Happy Council which reminded us of this! But precisely for this we have received a ministerial priesthood to make the laity aware of their priesthood and enable them to exercise it. We have been configured to Christ the Priest to be able to act in the name of Christ the Head in person[ 2 ].

We have been taken from among men, and we ourselves remain poor servants, but our mission as priests of the New Testament is sublime and indispensable: it is that of Christ, the only Mediator and Sanctifier, to such an extent that it calls for a total consecration of our life and our being. The Church will never be able to bring herself to lack priests, holy priests. The more the people of God reaches maturity, the more Christian families and lay Christians assume their role in their multiple apostolic commitments, the more they need priests who are fully priests, precisely for the vitality of their Christian life.

And in another sense, the more the world is dechristianized or lacks maturity in its faith, the more it also needs priests who are totally dedicated to witnessing to the fullness of the mystery of Christ.

This is the assurance that should sustain our own priestly zeal, this is the perspective that should encourage us to encourage with all our strength, through prayer, witness, calling and formation, the vocations of priests and deacons.

4. I add: apostles of Christ Jesus by the will of God, keep the apostolic, missionary concern, which is so lively among most French priests. Many - this is particularly striking over the past thirty-five years - have been haunted by the fear of announcing the Gospel in the heart of the world, in the heart of the lives of our contemporaries, in all walks of life, whether they are intellectuals, workers, or even from the "fourth world", to those also who are often far from the Church, whom a wall even seemed to separate from the Church, and this through new approaches of all kinds, ingenious and courageous initiatives, even going so far as the sharing of work and of the living conditions of the workers in the perspective of the mission, in any case almost always with poor means.

Many - chaplains for example - are constantly on the go to meet the spiritual needs of a dechristianized, secularized world, often agitated by new cultural challenges. This pastoral concern, thought out and carried out in union with your bishops, is to your credit: may it continue and be purified unceasingly.

This is the Pope's wish. How to be a priest without sharing the zeal of the Good Shepherd? The Good Shepherd cares for those who are estranged from the sheepfold for lack of faith or religious practice[ 3 ]; a fortiori, he cares about the whole flock of the faithful to be gathered together and fed, as evidenced by the daily pastoral ministry of so many parish priests and vicars.

5. In this pastoral and missionary perspective, may your ministry always be that of the apostle of Jesus Christ, of the priest of Jesus Christ. Never lose sight of what you are ordained to do: to advance men in the divine life[ 4 ]. The Second Vatican Council asks you both not to remain strangers to human life and to be “witnesses and dispensers of a life other than earthly life”[ 5 ].

Thus, you are ministers of the Word of God, to evangelize and train evangelizers, to awaken, teach and nourish the faith - the faith of the Church - to invite people to conversion and holiness[ 6 ]. You are associated with Christ's work of sanctification, to teach Christians to make the offering of their lives at all times, and especially in the Eucharist which “is the source and summit of evangelization”[ 7 ].

And there, dear brother priests, we must always watch, with extreme care, for a celebration of the Eucharist that is truly worthy of this sacred mystery, as I recently recalled in my Letter on this subject. Our attitude in this celebration must really bring the faithful into this holy action which puts them in relationship with Christ, the Holy One of God. The Church has entrusted this mystery to us and it is she who tells us how to celebrate.

You also teach Christians to imbue their whole life with the spirit of prayer, you prepare them for the sacraments; I am thinking especially of the sacrament of penance or reconciliation which is of capital importance for the path of conversion of the Christian people. You are educators in the faith, trainers of consciences, guides of souls, to enable each Christian to fulfill his personal vocation according to the Gospel, in sincere and active charity, to read in events what God expects of him, to take his full place in the community of Christians of which you are the unifiers and pastors and who must be missionaries[ 8 ], to also assume his temporal responsibilities in the community of men in a manner consistent with the Christian faith .

The catechumens, the baptized, the confirmed, the spouses, men and women religious, individually or in association, count on your specific help to themselves become what they should be.

In short, all of your own strength is devoted to the spiritual growth of the Body of Christ, whatever the specific ministry or missionary presence entrusted to you. It is your part that is the source of very great joy and also of very great sacrifices. You are close to all men and all their problems “as priests”. You preserve there your priestly identity which allows you to ensure the service of Christ to which you have been ordained. Your priestly personality must be a sign and an indication for others; in this sense your priestly life cannot suffer from being secularized.

6. Well situated in relation to the laity, your priesthood articulates with that of your bishop. You participate in your rank in the episcopal ministry through the sacrament of Holy Orders and the canonical mission.

This is the basis of your responsible and voluntary obedience to your bishop, your wise and confident cooperation with him. He is the father of the “presbyterium”. You cannot build God's Church outside of him. It is he who creates unity in pastoral responsibility, as the Pope creates unity in the universal Church.

Reciprocally, it is with you, thanks to you, that the bishop exercises his triple function which the Council has developed at length[ 9 ]. There is a fruitful communion there, which is not only in the realm of practical coordination, but which is part of the mystery of the Church and which takes on particular importance in the Presbyteral Council.

7. This unity with your bishops, dear friends, is inseparable from that which you have to live among priests. All the disciples of Christ have received the commandment of mutual love: for you, the Council goes so far as to speak of sacramental fraternity: you participate in the same priesthood of Christ[ 10 ].

Unity must be in truth: you establish the sure foundations of unity by being courageous witnesses to the truth taught by the Church so that Christians are not swept away by every wind of doctrine, and by performing all the acts of your ministry in accordance with the standards that the Church has specified, otherwise it would be scandal and division. Unity must be in apostolic work, where you are called to accept diverse and complementary tasks in mutual esteem and collaboration. Unity is no less necessary in terms of fraternal love: no one should judge his brother by suspecting him “a priori” of being unfaithful, by only knowing how to criticize him, or even by slandering him, as Jesus reproached the Pharisees.

It is from our priestly charity that we bear witness and build up the Church. Especially since we have the responsibility, as the Council says, to lead all lay people to unity in love and to ensure that no one feels like a stranger in the community of Christians[ 11 ] . In a world that is often divided, where the options are one-sided and abrupt, the methods too exclusive, priests have the fine vocation of being the architects of rapprochement and unity.

8. All of this, dear Brothers, is linked to the experience we have of Jesus Christ, in other words to holiness. Our holiness is an essential contribution to making fruitful the ministry that we carry out[ 12 ]. We are the living instruments of Christ the Eternal Priest.

To this end, we are endowed with a special grace, to tend, for the benefit of the people of God, to the perfection of the one we represent. It is above all the different acts of our ministry which themselves order us to this holiness: to transmit what we have contemplated, to imitate what we are accomplishing, to offer ourselves entirely at Mass, to lend our voice to the Church in the prayer of the hours, to unite us to the pastoral charity of Christ...[ 13 ]

Our celibacy, for its part, shows that we are totally consecrated to the work to which the Lord has called us: the priest, seized by Christ, becomes “the man for others”, fully available to the Kingdom, without a divided heart, capable of accepting fatherhood in Christ. Our attachment to the person of Christ must therefore be strengthened in any way, by meditation on the Word, by prayer in connection with our ministry, and first of all by the Holy Sacrifice which we celebrate every day[ 14 ], and it must take the means that the Church has always advised its priests . We must constantly rediscover with joy the intuition of the first call that came to us from God: “Come, follow me”.

9. Dear friends, I invite you to hope. I know you carry “the weight of the day and the heat”, with much merit. One could list the interior and exterior difficulties, subjects of concern, especially in this time of unbelief: no one better than the Apostle Paul will have spoken of the tribulations of the apostolic ministry[ 15 ], but also of its hopes. It is therefore first and foremost a question of faith. Don't we believe that Christ has sanctified and sent us? Do we not believe that he remains with us, even if we carry this treasure in fragile vessels and ourselves need his mercy, of which we are the ministers for others?

Do we not believe that he works through us, at least if we do his work, and that he will increase what we have laboriously sown according to his Spirit? And do we not believe that he will also grant the gift of the priestly vocation to all those who will have to work with us and take over, especially if we know how to change ourselves the gift that we have received by the laying on of hands? May God increase our faith! Let us also extend our hope to the whole Church: some members are suffering, others are cramped in many ways, others are experiencing a veritable springtime. Christ must often repeat to us: “Why do you fear, you men of little faith?”[ 16 ].

Christ will not abandon those who surrender themselves to him, those who surrender themselves to him every day.

10. This cathedral is dedicated to Our Lady. Next year, I'll go to the grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes, and I'm looking forward to it. Your country has many sanctuaries where your faithful like to pray to the Blessed Virgin, their Mother. We priests must be the first to invoke her as our Mother. She is the mother of the priesthood that we have received from Christ. Please give him your ministry, give him your life. May she accompany you, like the first disciples, from the first joyful encounter at Cana, which makes you think of the dawn of your priesthood, until the sacrifice of the cross, which necessarily marks our lives, until Pentecost in the ever more penetrating expectation of the Holy Spirit whose Spouse she has been since the Incarnation. We will end our meeting with an Ave Maria.

With regret, I must leave you, for today. But priests are always close to my heart and to my prayers. In the name of the Lord, I am going to bless you: to bless each one of you, to bless the priests whom you represent, to bless especially those who experience trial, physical or moral, loneliness or temptation, so that God may give his peace to all. May Christ be your joy! In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit! Amen!

 [ 1 ] No. 28.

 [ 2 ] Cf. Decree Presbyterorum Ordinis , n.2.

 [ 3 ] See ibid ., n.6.

 [ 4 ] See ibid ., n.2.

 [ 5 ] See ibid ., n.3.

 [ 6 ] See ibid ., n.4.

 [ 7 ] Ibid ., n.5.

 [ 8 ] See ibid ., n.6.

 [ 9 ] Cf. Lumen Gentium , nn. 25-28.

 [ 10 ] Cf. Presbyterorum Ordinis , n.8.

 [ 11 ] See ibid ., n.9.

 [ 12 ] See ibid ., n.12.

 [ 13 ] See ibid ., n.12-14.

 [ 14 ] Cf. Letter of Maundy Thursday 1980, n.10.

 [ 15 ] Cf. 2 Co , 4-5.

 [ 16 ] Mt 8, 26.

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